^8 




(Ms.. 
Book 



/ AN 



DELIVERED J-—-—'* 



BEFORE THE 

C\J^C\JVKATl and HEVOLVTIOK 
SOCIETIES. 



BY JAMES HAMILTON, Jun. 

A MEMBER OF THE CINCINNATI. 



AND PUBLISHED AT THEIR JOINT REQUEST 



CHARLESTON : 

PRINTED BY A. E. MILLER, 120, BROAD-STREET. 

1821. 






-5-^/// 



(£)iEii^3i©sro 



FELLOW CITIZENS ! 

In an age when suffering humanity required it 
most, a new Land of Promise was revealed in this 
Western wilderness. 

It seems to have entered into the scheme of 
God's benevolence, that the Pilgrims whom 
he was sending forth to build up the founda- 
tions of a new empire to adorn the face of his 
creation, should be disciplined by an instruc- 
tive and salutary adversity — that their fortitude 
should be tried by discomfiture, their constancy by 
persecution, their religious resignation by calamity 
in its bitterest forms, their courage by all that is 
hazardous in enterprize and frightful in peril. 

It is but a narrow philosophy, which refers our 
Revolution to a trifling impost on glass or tea; the 
causes of it were interwoven in the moral ha- 
bits of our ancestors; they were cherished by 
the toleration of peculiar and various forms of re- 
ligious worship, and by a fervid attachment to all 
those branches of the Constitution of the mother- 
country, which wore even the semblance of free- 
dom. 

The Colonies were the vigorous offset of an 
age essentially distinguished for its rapid progress 



6 
in civil and political philosophy. The springs of 
government had been measured, its relations dis- 
criminated, its legitimate powers and secret abuses 
defined with a force and intensit}'' of s^^ecidation 
and research, supplying all that mere theory could 
afford, long before the Rock of Plymouth received 
the venerable Patriarchs. Although Lord Bute 
had never lived to fling the weight of his pre- 
judices in opposition to the substantial strength 
and real prosperity of his country — although 
Grenville had never been blinded by the "phan- 
tom of American Taxation," or the inconstancy 
of North enfeebled the measures of his King, 
yet we must and would have been Free! — The 
God of Nature had inscribed the charter of our 
Freedom in the sturdy sense, the pure and fearless 
devotion, the heroic spirit, and matchless vigour 
of our fathers. They brought with them the se- 
minal principle of that Liberty which with us has 
ripened into a fructiferous maturity. 

It would be a censurable apathy to leave this 
subject without offering to the memory of these 
generous and venerable Patriots the tribute of our 
reverence and gratitude. Within the period as- 
signed for the ordinary duration of human life, 
they had carried the triumphs of civilization far 
into the recesses of the forest— They had subdu- 
ed the obduracy of nature, and turned her bless- 
ings to the most magnificent account — In spots 
which for ages had witnessed the revels of licen- 
tious barbarism, were seen to rise those beautiful 
forms and modifications of civilized existence, 
which now confer such exquisite embellishment 
on the moral and physical landscape of our coun- 



7 
try — They had covered its surface with a popu- 
lation of two millions, well educated, pious, reso- 
lute and discreet, fearing God, loving liberty ; and 
presenting in the blameless purity of their lives, 
and in the efforts of their successful industry, 
finer combinations of simplicity and heroism than 
pagan antiquity can afford. 

When our Revolution, in the natural course of 
events arrived, the materials for its consummation 
were at hand. These were found in the virtue 
and intelligence of a brave and enlightened 
people. 

In the history of what country shall we find a 
just parallel to the patriotic devotion, deep wis- 
dom and mascuiine eloquence of the Representa- 
tives of our First Congress? Their moderation 
was alien to the usual spirit of revolt — their en- 
thusiasm was exempt from fanaticism — their views 
of freedom from anarchy and licentiousness. No 
crude theories of indefinite perfection or unlimited 
happiness clouded the intense and unalterable gaze 
with which they contemplated the rising destinies 
of their country — No bloody proscriptions, no 
outrages on humanity, no excesses between the 
casuistry of an easy morality and the plausible 
necessities of a convenient policy, disgraced 
their measures. These were in unison with the 
mandates of a perfect justice, reclining on her 
throne in a period of profound and undisturbed 
tranquillity. 

if the military events of the Revolution have 
comparatively less of an unvarying splendour, 
than the trophies of wisdom and eloquence which 
decorate its civil history, the causes are to be 



8 
found rather in the want of the materials of war, 
than in the (h'fectiveness of those moral resources 
vvhicii determine a people to be great and render 
them invincible. The commencement of our 
struggle foimd our country without an army. — 
Tlie assemblage of its forces was simultaneous with 
the conflicts into which they were precipitated by 
the daring attrocity of the enemy. Not a moment 
was allowed for organization and discipline. Our 
gallant yeomanry rushed to those vales which they 
had adorned and fertilized by their labour, car- 
rying with them, little of the mere mechanism of 
the soldier, but sustaining, nevertheless, in their 
I)roud resistance, the firmness of spirits resolved to 
be free, and regardless of suffering. The records 
of heroic enterprize and valorous achievement arc 
yet abundantly copious to vindicate their military 
re|)utation. But this canonized force which up- 
held our country in the darkest hour of its peril, 
has claims to our gratitude, which fling the pride 
of abstract science into comparative insignificance 
and contempt. What a poor i)icture is the art of 
war, with all its complicated geometry and attro- 
cious energy, contrasted with the constancy and 
heroism of that band whom defeat could not con- 
quer, or calamity subdue — who rallied in the face 
of adverse fortune, and found a noble compensa- 
tion for her reverses in the sacredness of that 
cause to which they had offered up the libation of 
their blood and the tribute of their lives. A cause 
on which they had conferred an unfading splendour 
by the practise of more than the courtesies of 
civilized warfare, in the midst of provocations 
which would have justified a retaliation full, san- 
guinary and exterminating. 



Oae of the brightest events in the history of this 
conflict is that it should have produced a being 
whose example burnt with the purest and most 
unsubdued lustre in periods of most profound 
gloom and embarrassment. The production of 
such a man. is alone an adequate fund of glory to 
sustain a nation's claims to immortality. There 
was nothing common place in the scale by which 
he was graduated, if he partook largely of the 
spirit of the times in which he lived, the essentials 
of his .character were of solitary grandeur — for 
antiquity had revealed no mould of the same great- 
ness, while he towered above the waste of modern 
times in peerless and immeasurable elevation. — 
This is the fiat of fate and the award of posterity. 
Time in his career is subverting many dazzling 
edifices built up in the pride and presumption of 
man, — He unveils the delusions of an age, cor- 
rects contemporary and posthumous injustice — 
punishes, long after the ashes of his victim have 
returned to their poor elements. He throws down 
the idols of a century and consigns to oblivion the 
pagods of human homage and devotion ; but every 
effort of his power, every effect of his desolation, 
is to remove some feeble impediment to the ma- 
jestic rise of the Hero of the New World. 

It is the distinctive and enviable characteristic of 
our Revolution, that it should have subverted no- 
thing but the evils which occasioned it. It left 
our people in the undisturbed enjoyment of all 
that was valuable in their social customs and civil 
institutions. The tempest had purified the at- 
mosphere without defacing the beauty of nature, 
oir prostrating a single land-mark. These re- 



mained to form not only the elements but the fin- 
ished bodies of a polity which has stamped a new 
era in the history of man. 

When the architects of our political edifice 
approached their undertaking they neither slight- 
ed the speculations of philosophy nor were gov- 
erned by them. They had indeed little else to do 
than to give form and arrangement to the rudi- 
ments of a rational freedom that were existing 
around them. These were found in unimpaired 
vigour. Religious toleration had long freed con- 
science from its shackles, and emboldened the 
spirit of inquiry. The trial by jury had familiar- 
ized our people to the beautiful union, which 
liberty and justice exemplify in this admirable 
contrivance. The liberty of the press, that en- 
gine of vast and undefinable potency had, in the 
infancy of the Colonies, developed the powers of 
its expansibility and the play of its moral forces. 

The Representative principle, the true essence 
of a free government so imperfectly understood 
by the ancients, had recommended itself by its 
practical blessings in most of the colonial assem- 
blies; and when we add to this the copious re- 
sources which the spirit and opinions of the 
people at large supplied, is it surprizing that the 
framers of our Constitution, should not have 
missed those master principles which they desired 
to obtain ? 

Still the imperishable renown of having first 
exhibited the example of a government, in which 
allegiance is no more than equivalent to protec- 
tion, and power and responsibility are correlative 



11 

terms, belongs, by an unfortunate distinction for 
humanity, exclusively to ourselves. 

A vast variety of concurring causes, too multi- 
farious for our present discussion, tends to prove 
the durability of our institutions. Independently 
of those which are afforded by our inbred and 
religious attachment to these glorious forms, the 
unfettered alienation of property, recognized by 
our laws, is calculated, whilst it animates the 
spirit of enterprize, and rewards the efforts of 
industry, to maintain that equality which is the 
vital principle of stability in republics. A free 
state is led by an infdlible instinct to throw the 
aggregate of its wealth into a common market of 
competition, open to the talents and energies of 
its people. Where property is thus unfettered by 
the artificial checks and contrivances of a jealous 
aristocracy it is alone sufficient in the equality of 
condition it insures, to work out ultimately, the 
political regeneration of a nation, amidst forms 
apparently hostile to liberty. 

When there exists such a perfect congruity 
between the spirit and habits of our people and 
the principle which form the recorded letter of 
their Constitution, is there a vain arrogance in 
our presuming that the rights of man have been 
confided to our care, and that we have made theni 
eternal ? 

As recent as the event may be, I cannot pass 
over, without, at least, a cursory notice, our se- 
cond conflict with Great Britain. Indeed, without 
a special invocation, the images of this war rise 
in unfading splendour, to cast their golden visions 
on my feeble narrative. The matchless efforts of 



12 

heroism are identified with the sublimities of 
nature. The genius of our country has inscribed 
the story of its triumphs on those rocks which are 
washed by the waves of that cataract, whose 
spray ascends to heaven, and dims the lustre of 
the sun — Erie no longer conveys the mere asso- 
ciations of its vast waters, or the rude traditions 
of the warlike tribes which once peopled its shores 
in the pride of their power, and in the gory flush 
of their victories ; but it awakens the breathing 
harmony of the boldest and noblest anthem of na- 
tional triumph. The great Father of our Western 
Waters, in his march to the deep, carries, on his am- 
bient tide, the recollection of that event of "surpass- 
ing greatness," which gave lustre to our arms and 
glory to our Peace — The ocean, the long regarded 
arena of valour and enterprize, has borne our 
thunder and reflected our lightning from its wave. 
Our Eagle has a prescriptive right to rest on the 
summit of our lofty mountains, and to gaze un- 
dazzled at the sun. Who shall dispute her pre- 
rogative to sail over the azure deep and claim its 
trophies as her own ? 

At such a moment when the naval glory of our 
country stands revealed in the lights of its own 
splendour, it is impossible to repress the intrusion 
of the melancholy consciousness that of those who 
contributed to build up the pride of its magnifi- 
cence, two heroes, united in friendship and in fame, 
have descended to the cold chambers of the grave 
— Yes, our proud banner will never again greet 
their eager and fond gaze, nor will their noble 
forms be seen in the van of glory and peril ani- 
mating to victory and renown. O, thou fell and 



13 
odious disease, couldst thou not have revelled on 
some worthless carcase, to the wretched spirit of 
which thy gnawing annihilation would have been 
comfort, and have spared for future usefulness 
and honor the lamented and admirable Perry? — 
O, thou Moloch! before whose false idols, society 
has often wept the bitterest and most precious of 
its tears, couldst thou not in the frantic folly of 
thy sway have found some other victim, to deck 
thy bloody triumphs, than the brave, romantic 
and generous Decatur ? 

In offering to the spirits of these patriot war- 
riors, this feeble testimony of our gratitude and 
homage, can we permit the memory of our gallant 
and amiable Shubrick, who was deemed worthy 
to have been their associate, to repose in the 
tranquil recollection of our admiration and esteem 
without the passing tribute of our affection and 
regrets? — What a beautiful career of heroism has 
been interrupted ! What a race of honor has been 
stopped ! — its commencement glittering with star- 
ry brightness — its end veiled in> an inexplicable 
gloom. Who can forget the throbbing anxiety 
with which we watched the arrival on our shores 
of that bark which was to have borne him to his 
home, to the swiftness of whose wings had been 
confided the tidings of a peace which our valour 
had won. But, alas ! from the most dizzy cliff 
that overhangs the deep, the white speck of her 
canvass could never be descried ! 

It is not alone the impress of glory which the 
the late war stamped upon our national reputa- 
tion, which renders it a subject of elation and 
pride. Other considerations, less selfish in their 



14 , 
character, and more cheering in their moral influ- 
ence, confer on the consequences of this contest 
a deep and affecting interest. It has restored us 
in the best sense of the term — in those pacific dis- 
positions which are essential to the spirit of peace, 
to the land of our fathers. 

The Revolutionary struggle had left a feeling 
of mutual bitterness and distrust, which nothing 
but a conflict between powers altogether indepen- 
dent, could have dissipated. We were prone to 
remember with deep animosity the oppressions of 
a jealous and unkind parent, while she cherished 
a lively recollection of a revolt, the success of 
which had shaken the pillars of her empire, and 
stung to madness her keen sense of national pride. 
These dispositions were stimulated into an ex- 
traordinary acrimony by the collisions that grew 
out of that mighty drama which France exhibited 
to the alternate horror and admiration of the 
world. Thus the two countries were at war in 
spirit^ long before its reality was revealed in the 
clangor of arms and the efl*usion of blood. 

But it has been w^orth to both parties the 
price which it cost. It has taught a nation, of 
which arrogance is one of the infirmities of its 
nature, that we have not only a right to claim 
respect, but the power to enforce our claims; and 
it has taught us, except when urged by a necessity 
equivalent to that which called us to the field, that 
our true interests are promoted by cultivating re- 
lations of amity with a country menacing our pros- 
perity in no pursuit of serious competition, and 
allied to us by the endearing associations of a 



15 
common origin — the sympathies of blood, and the 
treasures of religion, philosophy and letters. 

May we not be permitted to hope that the 
" delenda est Carthago,^^ so long regarded as the 
wish and test of a rational patriotism, has been ex- 
ploded forever, and that we have at length arrived 
at that point " at which good feeling and sound 
philosophy can meet and agree" in ascribing some 
of the finest of our moral energies to our descent 
from a country whose transit across the hemis- 
phere of science, is marked by so broad a beam of 
light — whose muse in the collective affluence of 
her treasures, has snatched the palm even from 
the Parnassus of antiquity — and whose achieve- 
ments " o'er flood and field" have added the dra- 
pery of modern chivalry to the stern heroism of 
the ancient states. Whether we refer to the un- 
rivaled depth of the philosophy of Newton, or to 
the muse of Milton, " with no middle flight 
soaring above the Aonian mount" — turning in- 
ward the undazzled gaze of a spirit fraught with the 
fountains of eternal light; or whether we trace 
on the chart of philanthropy the " eccentric and 
benevolent voyage" of the kind and generous 
Howard, we have equal reason to be proud of 
our lineage, and to indulge in a cheering grati- 
tude, that it should have pleased a beneficent 
Providence that we should have sprung from the 
loins of a gallant nation, in the maturity of her 
power, and in the fullness of her triumphs in sci- 
ence and civilization, rather than that the cradle 
of our infancy should be hung with barbaric spoils, 
the emblems at once of ignorance, superstition 
and ferocity. 



16 

Let us remember that in spite of the forms of 
government which have subsisted in Europe, 
England is the only country there which enjoys 
a freedom that can be called practical — with 
whatever disgust and regret we may contemplate 
the corruptions which debase, and the errors 
which sophisticate her political system, yet the 
great body of her people, that vast commonwealth, 
which more in reference to the artificial arrange- 
ments of society than by an appropriate moral de- 
signation, we term 'the middle orders,' are in strict 
sympathy and social alliance with us, in all that 
is glorious in our institutions, and elevating in 
our character. — This mass of intelligence and 
physical power, in the direct control which it holds 
over its government, may be said to maintain 
whatever of the spirit of freedom yet exists in 
Europe, nor is it presumptuous to assert that the 
despotic police, the base Alliance, impiously 
calling itself " holy," is restrained from subvert- 
ing every semblance of liberty from the face of the 
old world, or of projecting a crusade against that 
of the new, by the censorial efficacy of the opini- 
ons of this fearless and enlightened community. — 
To that despot who heads this conspiracy against 
human happiness, should he in the madness of his 
power ever dream of putting out the light that 
blazes on this Western Sinai, we may well ad- 
dress, in the fine and indignant burst of the 
Poet-— 

'' Fond, imjjious man ! think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 
" Raised by thy breath has quenched the orb of day ? 
*• To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, 
*' And warms the nations with redoubled ray." 



17 

In this filial tribute which we have paid to the 
land of our fathers, rather than to the government 
which sometimes disgraces and often oppresses it; 
it is hoped the most scrupulous Republicanism 
will find nothing to censure. Will it not rather 
regard with fond and reverential attachment the 
country which holds the ashes of Sidney, and of 
Hampden, of Milton and of Locke ? Or if it will 
not worship at these sacred urns, there is enough 
in the land of the Shamrock and Thistle to in- 
voke and sanctify the spirit of Freedom. Where 
is the man amongst us who would dare to write 
the epitaph of Emmett, or would presume to 
affirm that he is more of a Republican than the 
brave, generous and patriotic Fletcher ? 

These are not the only reflections of an exhila- 
rating character which the late war is calculated 
to excite. It has led to the extinction of those 
parties, the collisions of which once weakened 
our country, and disturbed the harmony of its 
society. 

I come not here to burn the torch of Alecto— 
to me there is no lustre in its fires, nor cheering 
warmth in its blaze. Let us rather offer and 
mingle our congratulations, that those unhappy 
differences which alienated one portion of the 
community from the rest, are at an end, and that 
a vast fund of the genius and worth of our coun- 
try has been restored to its service, to give new 
vigour to its career of power and prosperity. 

To this blessed consummation the administra- 
tion of our venerable Monroe, has been a pow- 
erful auxiliary. This veteran of the Revolution, 

on whose body the scars of her battles are yet im- 
3 



IB 
pressed, has exhibited in the long progress of a 
noble life a combination of public virtue and 
private worth. He resembles his first and illus- 
trious predecessor, not alone in lineaments of ex- 
terior form, but in those qualities of higher use 
and of more essential value. He has conducted 
his administration by the lights of an enlarged 
and magnanimous policy, with feelings altogether 
American, which in illustrating the principles, have 
conferred a bright commentary on the immortal 
text, of our Constitution. 

The delusions of past years have rolled away, 
and the mists which once hovered over forms of 
now unshaded brightness are dissipated forever. 
We can now all meet and exchange our admira- 
tion and love in a generous confraternity of feel- 
ing, whether we speak of our Jefferson or our 
Adams, our Madison or our Hamilton, our 
PiNCKNEY or our Monroe; the associations of 
patriotism are awakened, and we forget the dis- 
tance in the political zodiac which once separated 
these illustrious luminaries, in the full tide of 
glory they are pouring on the brightest page of 
our history. — This unanimity of sentiment is not 
a sickly calm, in which the high energies of the 
nation are sunk into a debilitating paraylsis. It is 
the result of the blessed efficacy of our govern- 
ment, which, affording to our people no cause of 
complaint, carries the elastic spring of the human 
character into those exercises of individual enter- 
prize which are perpetually adding some new re- 
sources to our wealth, some new energy to our 
power. 



19 
This union can only annoy the Demagogue, who 
lives by the proscription of one half of his fellow- 
citizens, and in the delusions of a distempered 
state of public opinion. But to him who loves 
his country as a beautiful whole, not scarred and 
cut into the selfish compartments of sects and of 
schisms such a picture is one of unmixed triumph 
and g;ratulation. The necessity for the existence 
of parties in a free state, in the sense in which we 
have unfortunately understood them, isone of those 
paradoxes which the world has rather received 
than examined, aqd seems allied to the sophistry 
which would lead us to believe that the pleasures 
of domestic life are promoted by its dissentions, 
or that the jarring of the elements is essential to 
the harmony of the universe. No! An united is a 
happy, as well as an invincible people, — let this 
conviction be co-incident with the hope, that from 
the ashes of Party-Spirit, there will arrise the 
spirit of a noble rivalry, of who can do most for 
his country. 

VENERABLE FATHERS OF THE CINCINNATI ! 

Although I appear as the humble organ of 
your will, I cannot permit this occasion to escape 
without tendering to you a co-temporary homage, 
which posterity will ratify. The history of your 
association, is the record of fraternal concord, 
generous sympathy, noble beneficence, and of a 
patriotism too lofty for the influence of party. The 
testimony of near forty years has falsified the cal- 
umnious predictions which were flung on your 
cradle. So far from aiming ai political power, by 
a criminal ambition, by corrupt confederation, 
and the licentious spirit of intrigue, you, of all 



20 
the associations in our country, have mingled least 
in the strife of contending factions, and, amid the 
storms which have agitated the union, have pre- 
served a career of moderation and equanimity, 
which has demonstrated that your order was 
really established for the heaven-consecrated pur- 
poses of Charity, and for a perpetuation of those 
principles which led to our Revolution, and have 
given it an ineffable glory and renown. 

Those who found nothing in the canons of your 
constitution to revile, were willing to seize on the 
emblem of your order, and whilst badges of dis- 
tinction were accorded to other associations, the 
captious and over-weening patriotism of the day 
discovered a reason why the Soldier of the Revo- 
tion should be prohibited from wearing next to his 
heart the effigy of that bird, which, encompassed 
by the stars of our banner, had in battle waved 
before his eyes, and fanned the fires of his gene- 
rous enthusiasm. 

History has done, and will continue to do, jus- 
tice to your motives. 

But alas! within even my narrow recollection, 
what a cruel sweep has death made in your vene- 
rable ranks ! — We can well remember illustrious 
forms that are no longer to be seen. 

Child as I was, it seems but yesterday, from 
the depth and vividness of the impression, that I 
saw at the head of your patriot band, the gallant 
and intrepid Moultrie, who revealed, in the con- 
fiding frankness of his disposition, in the over- 
flowing benevolence of his heart, in the warmth 
of his affections, and his daring valour, one of 
those beautiful exemplars of military worth, which 



21 

by a unanimity of public sentiment, has long been 
regarded as one of the most interesting exhibitions 
of the human character. But, alas! thou *' brav- 
est of the brave," " thou art gone — thy genius fled 
up to the stars whence it came, and that warm 
heart of thine with all its generous and open ves- 
sels compressed into a clod of the valley." 

Since that melancholy moment, when we wit- 
nessed "the velvet pall, decorated with the military 
ensigns" of this gallant veteran, we have often 
been called to pay the last honors to departed 
worth. Who can forget that you have enrolled 
among your former members, him who bore the 
name of the Father of his Country, or that this 
Soldier now slumbers in the grave ? Alas! I have 
no pencil to catch and convey the strong lines and 
soft colouring of the character of the vanquisher 
of Tarleton; of that hero who wore his laurels 
with a modesty equal to the gallantry with 
which they were won, and who in the unaffect- 
ed simplicity of his character, seemed of all 
others the most ignorant of the blaze of public 
admiration which rested on his fame. There was 
a period when he who bore the orders and enjoyed 
the confidence and esteem of the hero of Guild- 
ford and Eutaw, was to be seen in your phalanx, 
exhibiting to the gaze of universal admiration that 
fine bust, which time, without spoiling, had 
touched with venerable beauty, the appropriate 
depository of the daring and chivalrous spirit 
which once animated it — Shall we say that this 
veteran is dead, when his genius has lived and yet 
lives in the valour of his gallant sons ? 



Ji'^^U. <^. 






22 

Since one of your number has addressed you 
from this place, the amiable Findley, who loved 
you with all the enthusiasm of his kind and feel- 
ing heart, has gone to his last account, to receive 
the reward of his virtues. And within a few 
months, your companions in arms, the humane 
and gallant Theus and D'Oyley, have yielded 
up their generous spirits. 

*' Death has no terrors for the brave." I know 
3'OU contemplate his approach with less concern 
than those who are destined to mourn over your 
loss, and to cherish the legacy of your example. 
But it is impossible " to avert the dreaded page," 
the time will arrive when not one of that sacred 
band who saved a country and found an empire, 
will be seen among us. Think not that an indif- 
ference to your fame and virtues will character- 
ize such an era. When the aching eye shall look 
in vain for the scar-worn veteran of the Revolu- 
tion, then it is that public gratitude, stung by the 
recollection of some unworthy neglect will feel 
it a baljTiy solace to consecrate each memorial of 
his past existence. To his urn patriotism will 
perform the most sacred of its pilgrimages — the 
records of former times will be searched with the 
most pious scrutiny, to discover some forgotten 
name, or to illustrate some trait of high service 
and generous devotion. 

With those of you who yet remain, may the 
lamp of life still continue to burn with serene and 
soothing lustre, and when its flame shall glimmer, 
sink and be extinct forever, may the blessings of 
Almighty God await you in that world where 
patriotism must look at last for the best and the 
brightest of its rewards. 



23 



Our destiny has been cast in a state, where a 
generous ambition has the materials for its in- 
struction, and the objects of its reward. South- 
Carolina has never been a feeble star in the 
galaxy of the union — She has invariably sustained 
the character of bringing her full contingent of 
public virtue to the service of the public weal. — 
Her patriotism has been ardent and pure, her 
honor lofty and uncompromising — Her sons have 
bled wherever the blood of our country has flowed, 
and they have participated in the triumphs which 
adorn her civil and political history.* 

To uphold a portion of this renown necessari- 
ly devolves on you. When I have before me a 
philosoi)hy teaching so elequently by examples, I 
shall not fatigue you by the didactic dryness of 
abstract principles. The sources of your instruc- 
tion are around you. What the cherished bio- 
graphy of your country does not afford is supplied 
by living and contemporary worth. Our Gallery 
of Portraits is full — it embraces all the conceiv- 
able varieties of intellectual beauty and moral 
grandeur. 

If you wish to hang the trophies of eloqence 

* South Carolina has furnished to the United States, two Presidents 
of the Revolutionary Congress, a Chief Justice and an Associate Judge 
of the Supreme Court, seven Anibassadors, three General Officers of 
the Revolutionary Army, a Major Geueral of the Army of '98, and two 
General Officers for the late war. She has afforded a Secretary for the 
Navy, has now one of her distinguished Sons in the War Depart- 
ment, and has given to Congress a President of the Senate and a Speak- 
er of the House of Representatives. In 18(#, she might have elevated 
one ot her Citizens to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation, and has now 
the reputalion of sending to the House of Representatives an indi- 
vidual worthy of this honor, Avhom public opinion has lonff regarded 
as one of the first Statesmen of the age.— 5ee Ramsay's History -of So 
Carolina, Vol If. Page 358, in r^ferrcnce to the first part ofthhMtp 



24 

around the Doric columns of an exalted patriot- 
ism, you have the example of the elder Rut- 
ledge, the mighty thunder of whose speech was 
the fit herald of the great emotions which arose 
in his capacious heart; or, if there be something 
too " severely great" in this model, you have for 
your imitation the more mild and attractive graces 
which adorn the genius of his brother. This 
beautiful mould gleams with the blended lights of 
literature and taste, presenting all that is admira- 
ble in the elevations of public service, all that is 
fascinating in the charms of private life. 

If you wish to admire, and ever have occasion 
to emulate an elevated and indignant spirit of de- 
fiance, the patriotic Gadsden has instructed you 
from his dungeon, in the cheerless confinement 
and hopeless captivity of which his great soul refus- 
ed to capitulate with the oppressors of his country. 

Addison, in the beauty of his fictions, has 
been supposed to have sketched the chef dPceuvre 
of a patriot merchant, but have we not in the 
elder Laurens an original of higher authority 
and more admirable delineation ? Will you re- 
gard the gallantry of Bayard and Crillon, as a 
doubtful romance, when the spirit of his daring 
and darling son seems to point to the proud sum- 
mits where the garlands of chivalry are hung ? 

May the calamities of our country never pro- 
duce a necessity for those services which have 
associated the name of Marion with our best 
recollections; if tSiey should, you will find in the 
character of this untiring and unconquerable par- 
tizan an enterprize and humanity which it offers 
no violence to historic truth to parallel with the 



25 
spirit of adventure and military heroism which 
enobled the annals of his protestant ancestry. — 
Had he lived in those days he would have been 
worthy the confidence of Coligni, and to have 
fought by the side of Mornai Du Plesis, a hero 
whose chivalrous and romantic gallantry conferred 
a beautiful garniture on his pure, his ardent and 
undissembled piety. 

However consoling it may be to refer to the 
past for such testimonies of emphatic instruction, 
yet we have enough in the instances of contem- 
porary success to cherish and direct a noble emu- 
lation. 

Have we not seen rise up among us, an indi- 
vidual without the aid of solitary a circumstance of 
hereditary furtune or powerful connexions — yet, 
by the sovereignty of genius and the nobility of 
nature, obtain more than the public honors of 
his country, by appropriating to himself its highest 
confidence and esteem ? — We have seen him sus- 
taining at the Bar, the learning of his profession 
with a lofty and courteous generosity which the 
unjust prejudice of the world has more usually 
allied to other avocations — We have seen him 
occupying the first place in the popular assembly 
of the nation, to which danger had summoned 
the highest talent, and where the chances of dis- 
tinction had produced the most vehement compe- 
tition ; and lastly, we have witnessed the loud 
and unanimous call which has taken him from 
the judiciary of our State, where the lights of his 
genius had begun to blaze with increasing splen- 
dour, to preside over and subdue the chaos of an 

institution, whose interests are vital to those of 

4 



26 
our country, whose character had been violated, 
and whose fund had been pillaged by a spirit of 
licentious and atrocious rapine. 

What a living sarcasm is the life of such a man 
on the wretched and exploded theories of a base 
aristocracy! The brightness of his rise flings 
back on his cradle a halo of unfading glory. 

In selecting this individual, of whom absence 
gives me the privilege of speaking, let me not be 
accused of injustice to those who ran with him 
the race of honor and distinction; a rivalry so full 
of generous emulation, yet so devoid of all jostling 
envy. Here we must pause. I cannot invade 
that modesty which genius wears as the most 
beautiful of its attractions. But of the dead I 
may be permitted to speak. Of one who in a 
Roman form revealed more than a Roman spirit — 
One, the play of whose noble heart beat to the 
strong pulsations of a lofy and spotless honor — 
One, who moved among us to inspire confidence 
and conciliate esteem; who seemed to have 
snatched the spirit of an heroic age to give it 
warmth and life in the fervor and enthusiasm of his 
own bosom. In making the lamented Simons 
our model we shall select a combination of vir- 
tues which this community will long cherish and 
revere. They who knew him best and loved him 
most, wdll pardon the poor flower I have flung on 
a grave which has been visited by the verdure of 
but one spring, and holds the ashes of him who 
will long live in the unimpaired fulness of our 
fondest esteem. 

Yes, my young friends! with such lights the 
paths that lead to the elevations of life are irradi- 



27 
ated with a diffused and cheering splendour, and 
invite our footsteps by all those sanctions which 
make ^' ambition virtue," and consecrate its as- 
pirations. 

In estimating the tendency of a long series of 
distinguished examples to lead to usefulness and 
honor, let us not forget the influence which Wo- 
man holds over the destiny of Man. 

It is not alone in tracing this influence to " fire- 
side enjoyments" and " home-born happiness," 
(however entirely, in these associations, as it has 
been beautifully said, " we seem to recover a 
part of the forgotten value of existence") that its 
moral sublimity is unveiled — It is when Woman 
in the loveliness of her beauty — in the majesty of 
her virtue — appears as the arbitress of Man, that 
her influence stands confessed with an angel's 
power, and an angePs charms. It is when she 
rebukes by her frown, our vices and infirmities — 
It is when she reserves the blessedness of her 
smiles for all that is noble and praiseworthy in 
the capacities of our nature, that she seems the 
sweet vision which once reposed in the bowers 
of innocence, with heaven's purity in her heart, 
and heaven's harmony in her graces. 

Those sainted matrons who filled the souls of 
our fathers with mingled love and heroism — who 
animated their bosoms with a spirit of unconquer- 
able firmness — who went with them into cheerless 
dungeons and loathsome hospitals — who girded on 
their swords for the tented field, and prepared by 
finer precepts than heathen antiquity ever knew, 
the hero to meet his last scene of suffering on the 
scaffold, now live in those beautiful forms we see 



28 
before us. They know what vices to despise — 
what virtues to adore. 

FELLOW citizens! 

Let us approach and contemplate for a moment 
the proud elevation on which our country now 
reposes. Its foundations are of granite, its " tur- 
rets glitter in the skies." 

' We have a government and a land worth our 
most vigilant patriotism to preserve — a realm of 
glorious extent and inestimable value. It is our 
peculiar and eminent distinction to have confid- 
ed to our custody the existence and progress of 
an experiment in which the whole human race 
has a deep and indefeasible interest — It involves 
no other solution than this; whether the elements 
of civil society can be held together without the 
stern supervision of an undefined and illimitable 
authority — whether there is something in the phy- 
sical and moral destiny of man, which disqualifies 
him for aught but ''a hewer of wood and a drawer 
of water" — whether he is irreversibly doomed to 
surrender nearly all the fruits of his labour to a 
legalized rapine which wrings without mercy and 
measures without justice — whether his blood 
is eternally to flow in an unresisting tide, influ- 
enced by the dark phases of a guilty and infernal 
ambition — In short, whether the prayer which 
human suflering sends forth, can ascend to hea- 
ven, except under the guidance of a hierarchy 
impiously calling itself divine. 

In. this experiment the world are our spectators, 
and posterity our judge. 

The light which we have kindled on these shores 
has travelled over the void of the deep ; it has vis- 



29 

ited the summits of human society, and pierced 
the corners of its extreme loneliness and despair 
— It has refreshed the heart of the Peasant by the 
views of attainable happiness, and disturbed the 
slumbers of the Despot, by revealing in its glare 
" the hand writing on the wall," which tehs him 
tyranny is not of God but of man — 

That it may continue to irradiate and ultimate- 
ly to bless, depends on our unwinking vigilance 
and unwearied devotion to those elements which 
give brilliancy to its blaze, and vitality to its flame. 

The union of this confederation is the key-stone 
to the whole fabric of our political and national 
greatness, our civil and social prosperity. 

Let this sentiment enter with religious solemni- 
ty into all our public relations with our country; 
and form a theme of domestic instruction at our 
altars and fire-sides. 

The situation of the United States, is one, al- 
most of unmingled prosperity. 

Of the existence of our government, we are 
more conscious by its protection than restraints. 
Om* resources have been developed with an am- 
plitude and rapidity of which the world has had 
no previous example. In a period, almost em- 
braced by the progress of youth to manhood, we 
have extended the empire of our laws over re- 
gions which had long slumbered in savage or so- 
litary gloom — We have perfected institutions po- 
litical and social which the world had regarded 
as the dreams and speculations of a vain philosphy, 
whilst we have unfolded all the subsidiary prin- 
ciples which are necessary to give permanency to 
their existence and moral efficacy to their swav — 



30 
The earth has yielded in glorious abundance her 
treasures to the efforts of our resolute invincible 
industry. The ocean, ai^itated by our keen enter- 
prize has borne on her bosom the trophies of our 
wealth and the triumphs of our prowess. 

In the very outset of our race we have antici- 
pated the growth of ages, and bafiled tiie calcu- 
lations of a philosophy, which has atlcmpted to 
measure the velocity of our action and the strides 
of our power. 

With so many causes for exultation we may 
bear without repining, the taunts of the critical 
dandyism of Europe, by which we are told that 
our society wants its 'Corinthian capital,' and that 
our taste is without delicacy, and our literature 
without elegance. 

If this be a reproach, without acquiescing in its 
justice, we may admit it to be true, and yet have 
enough left to give an unrivalled supremacy to 
our character. When our proportions are Doric 
we may willingly forego, the useless and incon- 
gruous entwining of the Acanthus, however 
beautiful in its appropriate order. 

In those departments of philosophy of the 
most difficult attainment and success, our progress 
will be admitted to have unfolded a career of un- 
exampled brilliancy. 

In the science of overnment we comparative- 
ly stand alone. Ii/', lysics, the genius of Frank- 
lin has stamped an era as luminous as the light- 
nings of heaven, whilst his writings in that beau- 
tiful plnloso})hy, which teaches us how to live 
and how to live happily, will form the delight 
and instruction of future ages. In the science of 



St 

war, both naval and military, even our enemy 
will not question our attainments. Our first fleet- 
engagement resulted in a victory achieved by a 
hero of twenty-four, who pushed the tactics of 
RoDNEV to an extreme of the most dazzling peril 
and renown. Our Jackson has touched all the 
varieties of the art, with the power of his deep 
and pervading genius. In the wilderness of the 
savage he circumvented his wiles, wrested the 
tomahawk from his infernal and gory grasp, and 
has closed in an eternal silence the clangor of his 
war-hoop. He has vanquished the vanquishers of 
Euroi)e by beating the elite of an army elated by 
the triumphs of Vimeira and Salamanca, and fresh 
from the lessons of him who fought and who con- 
quered on the fields of Waterloo. In mechanical 
philosophy we have, with the contrivances of art 
spiritualized matter, by the variety of its modifi- 
cations, the efficacy of its agents, and the mira- 
cles of its results. The genius of Fulton, has 
given ubiquity to enterprize, in the apparent sub- 
jugation of distance, by the untiring velocity of 
his magnificent machines. 

In all the moral habitudes which sanctify, in all 
the ingenuous courtesies, which adorn without 
enfeebling society, we are superiour to those who 
reproach us. In that literature which has relation 
to the wants of society, and the purposes of a 
practical utility our efibrts .• respectable, and 
our success essentially progressive. In diploma- 
cy, our ministers have displayed a vigor and bold- 
ness of reasoning and research, a felicity of illus- 
tration and a personal elevation and dignity, which 
have won for them a unanimity of admiration and 



32 

esteem. Although the history of our Revolution 
has never yet been told with the philosophic spirit 
of Hume, or the gorgeous magnificence of Gibbon, 
yet our venerable and patriotic Ramsay has done 
no inadequate justice to his theme. If no bard 
has arisen to sins the story of our greatness, let 
ns be content to go on and realize the materials 
for a future epic, whose " great argument" shall 
be the dignity and happiness of the human species. 

When the departments of agricultural, commer- 
cial and professional enterprize are filled to reple- 
tion, and the overflowing of a redundant wealth 
lavishes its full tide on the various objects of social 
and intellectual embellisliment, — our Muse will 
plume her wing for a bold and dazzling flight, and 
the visions of our past and future glory live in the 
splendid immortality of verse — At the powerful 
bidding of the Painter and Statuary, forms of heroic 
greatness will be bodied forth in the perfection of 
art and the sublimity of nature; and this great Re- 
public be identified with all that is proud and con- 
soling in the history of man. 

In the indulgence of these themes, who shall 
dare to accuse us of presumption? 

Let the incense of gratitude blaze on the altars 
of God, and the bold anthem of our freedom 
piptch the vault of heaven. 

• Al'** BreaHies there a«aan, with sonl so dead, 
*' Who never to himself has said — 
« This is my own,— my native land?" 






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